## **🔍 What Is Happening**

If your website is hosted on SiteGround and OTTO shows a **Robot Challenge Screen** instead of your real page, SiteGround's Anti-Bot protection is likely stopping the OTTO crawler. The crawler is treated like an unknown automated visitor and is shown a CAPTCHA it cannot solve.

This is a server-side setting on SiteGround's network, not an error in your Search Atlas account or your website content.

## **⚠️ Why It Matters**

OTTO needs to read your pages to analyze them and apply optimizations. When the crawler is challenged, you may notice:

- OTTO reports a Robot Challenge Screen or a CAPTCHA page as your site's content
- Pages fail to scan or show incomplete data
- Optimizations cannot be verified or deployed on affected pages
- The issue shows up on several sites at once if they share the same SiteGround hosting

## **✅ How to Confirm the Cause**

1. Open one of the affected pages in your browser. Normal visitors will usually see the page without any challenge.
2. Check whether the site is hosted on SiteGround. Your hosting dashboard or a hosting lookup tool will show this.
3. Look at what OTTO is reporting for the page. If the page text mentions a robot challenge, security check, or CAPTCHA, the crawler is being blocked.
4. Check whether the problem affects only SiteGround-hosted sites. If sites on other hosts work fine, SiteGround's protection is almost certainly the cause.

## **🛠️ How to Fix It**

The fix is to ask SiteGround to allowlist the OTTO crawler so it is no longer challenged. Follow these steps:

1. **Gather the crawler details.** You need the OTTO crawler user agent and, if available, the IP addresses it uses. If you do not have these, open the chat widget in the platform and ask for the current OTTO crawler details.
2. **Send an allowlist request to SiteGround.** Ask them to exempt the OTTO crawler from Anti-Bot protection for your domain or account. Include every affected domain in one request.
3. **Wait for confirmation.** Once SiteGround confirms the change, the crawler should no longer see the challenge screen.
4. **Re-run the scan in OTTO.** Trigger a fresh crawl of one affected page and confirm OTTO now reads your real content.

## **📝 Sample Message for SiteGround**

You can copy and adapt the message below:

**Hello, my websites (list your domains) are being blocked by the Anti-Bot AI CAPTCHA, which shows a Robot Challenge Screen to a legitimate SEO crawler used by Search Atlas OTTO. Please allowlist the OTTO crawler user agent and IP addresses (details below) so it can access my sites without a challenge. Thank you.**

Add the user agent and IP details you received before sending.

## **💡 Tips to Avoid Repeat Issues**

- Request the allowlist for **all domains** on your SiteGround account, not just the first one you noticed.
- If you add new sites on SiteGround later, ask for the same exemption to be applied to them.
- Do not disable all security features on your site. A targeted allowlist for the OTTO crawler is safer and just as effective.
- If you also use a CDN or firewall plugin, check that it is not challenging the crawler as well.
- Keep a record of the request in case the block returns after a hosting update.

## **🔄 If the Challenge Still Appears**

If the Robot Challenge Screen still shows after SiteGround confirms the change, try the following:

- Wait a short time and run a new crawl, as server changes can take a while to apply.
- Confirm that the user agent and IP details you sent are the current ones.
- Check that the allowlist covers every domain and subdomain affected.
- Make sure no other security layer, such as a firewall plugin or CDN rule, is also blocking the crawler.

## **💬 Need More Help?**

If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type **human teammate** to be instantly connected with a member of our team. Please have your affected domain names ready, and mention that the sites are hosted on SiteGround, so we can help you faster.